Godbond by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page B

taunted another at the same time. “It is nothing to us that the sheep are gone like the wild antelope of the peaks.”
    â€œYes,” I said softly, “but surely you feel heart’s hunger even to think of the white antelope of the peaks.” They stared at me with faint frowns as their slow wits tried to comprehend what I was saying, and in a sort of trance created by my own words I turned and got quietly onto Talu, even though the horse could scarcely move in the strait place where I had led her. I mounted her just so that I would be able to gaze off toward the snowpeaks. “Where is Sakeema?” I asked again. “I must find him while the mountains still stand for you to tread upon.”
    A babble went up of a sort I was not expecting. “He is not here!” blurted a huge granite-gray Cragsman who loomed to my left.
    â€œHe’s gone!” agreed another.
    â€œThe place is empty except for—”
    â€œSilence!” thundered the slate-blue leader, furious, his shout echoing away in the quiet that at once followed. He turned on me and pointed his cudgel at my head, enraged but uncertain, shifting his great weight from foot to massive foot in annoyance or unease. “Who are you,” he demanded, “that we should bandy words with you?”
    It was time to show mettle. “Who is my brother Ytan,” I retorted, “that you should obey him? Is it not he who sent you here to waylay me?”
    â€œNo!” bawled the granite-gray Cragsman. “We always guard this place!”
    The blue one swung toward him in menace—I saw a rivalry there. “Be silent!” he bellowed at the other Cragsman, and to me he said fiercely, “Who are you?”
    I had told them Ytan was my brother, so they had to know I was a son of Tyonoc. They had seen me and fought against me before. Why, then, did they ask who I was? And what was I to tell them? That my name was Dannoc, or Darran, whatever? Blast and confound them, what would be the use of telling them either?
    I did not know how to answer, not with the mighty blackwood club nearly grazing my face and wonder spinning along with the fear in my mind. A guarded place, just beyond them? Of what sort? What did they mean, saying Sakeema was gone from that place? Some sign of him there, perhaps? “Sakeema,” I breathed aloud in wonder or in plea, and to my astonishment the Cragsmen stepped a pace back from me. Even their slate-blue leader stepped back, and his club wavered. On the Cragsmen’s hard faces came a look of doubt and awe.
    â€œNo!” I exclaimed. They thought I was taking the name of Sakeema—how could that be? Why did they not laugh? It was laughable, or it was blasphemy, and even for the sake of saving my skin I could not let it happen. “No, I mean—people of the peaks, what are the tales you tell of the coming of Sakeema?” I was pleading, eager. “Where do you say is his resting place?”
    Roars of anger answered me. Anger, glaring in their faces along with a plain disappointment. They surged toward me. “Bah! Kill him,” the granite-colored one shouted. Clubs swung up.
    But the blue leader, who stood nearest me, turned on them furiously. “We kill him when I say!” he thundered.
    â€œWhen you say! We’ll be here all day, waiting till you say!”
    They quarreled and tussled, taking sides, their roars and rumblings echoing off the mountainpeaks, their blows and shovings shaking the rocks—I heard the name of Sakeema shouted in tones fit to make the mountains shudder. The rivals were bludgeoning each other, some of the other Cragsmen doing the same and the rest of them clustering around like so many gawking stones, gray, greenish, tan, rimrock red. Few of them fixed their hard eyes on me any longer. When their uproar had reached a hopeful height I sent Talu quietly forward—
    A club came smashing down across my path, the slate-blue